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Re: Are you ready for the Odfrank overwintering challenge?

I need to look inside my hives to see what I have. As of last week, I had three hives, two single deep and single medium, and one, one deep and two mediums. Then, there is the other one. It has a virgin queen (hatched out a week before) with a deep and a medium, then a queen excluder and a single medium with a virgin queen (hatched a week before). So, if I see brood (or not), I will back date it to whatever the status was yesterday. (The queens hatched out Wednesday or Thursday, two weeks ago.)

If you think anything organic is good for you, go drink some organic solvents.
geek, learning how to be a beek

Re: Are you ready for the Odfrank overwintering challenge?

Re: Are you ready for the Odfrank overwintering challenge?

Originally Posted by BayHighlandBees

when do those Eucalyptus come into play, November?

Yes, watch the trees first for silver buds and then white blossoms. Watch the streets underneath for the silver flower caps. The has been a white flowering smaller euc in bloom for a month down highway 92 at El Camino and the red ficifolias have been blooming also along side 92 next to the golf course. Your bees can reach those.

Re: Are you ready for the Odfrank overwintering challenge?

Originally Posted by bevy's honeybees

So, odfrank, you in?

I have for years shown off and bragged about my beekeeping expertise on BeeSource, all along admitting my failures with small cell and winter losses. This thread is just Charlie's way of putting me down and embarrassing me. I hate to give him the pleasure of seeing me go down. And now he is even harassing me privately to take him and his wife out for dinner. HAH!

Re: Are you ready for the Odfrank overwintering challenge?

Originally Posted by odfrank

This thread is just Charlie's way of putting me down and embarrassing me. I hate to give him the pleasure of seeing me go down. And now he is even harassing me privately to take him and his wife out for dinner. HAH!

Re: Are you ready for the Odfrank overwintering challenge?

Although I still have 8 hives, I put one of the single deeps into a 10 frame double decker nuc for the winter. Other than that, things looked great when I got to check them Yesterday!! Tons of pollen coming in and they are storing away the nectar. They should have enough stores to make it to eucalyptus bloom around January and there are TONS of those trees in the area.

So again, final count is still 8 hives..............7 double deeps and 1 double deep nuc!! Im not even going to treat them with powdered sugar, just going to let them fight or fail with the mites, which I dont think is huge problem as the country hives had a really good broodbreak over the summer with a bad dearth, but came on strong with some feeding.

My only fear is the creek coming up really high, if that happens I'll be hauling hives to higher ground!! But it will take a very exceptionally wet year to do that!!

Re: Are you ready for the Odfrank overwintering challenge?

Originally Posted by odfrank

Yes, watch the trees first for silver buds and then white blossoms. Watch the streets underneath for the silver flower caps. The has been a white flowering smaller euc in bloom for a month down highway 92 at El Camino and the red ficifolias have been blooming also along side 92 next to the golf course. Your bees can reach those.

Olly's right, last fall the Euc started to flow and I wound up taking off 300 pounds from 4 hives that was collected from November to February. Very sweet tasting honey but it crystallizes fast.

Re: Are you ready for the Odfrank overwintering challenge?

Originally Posted by odfrank

The has been a white flowering smaller euc in bloom for a month down highway 92 at El Camino and the red ficifolias have been blooming also along side 92 next to the golf course. Your bees can reach those.

That's really close to my new San Mateo bee-yard. Your bees can obviously reach my yard because I caught one of your swarms last week.